It’s important! Go vote!

It’s important!
Go vote!

I

t used to be that the first Tuesday in November was Election Day. You’d go to your polling place that day, maybe you’d stand on line, you’d sign the big ledger — every year you’d add another messy signature to the many you’d already scrawled there — and then you’d go into the voting booth, pull the big lever to shut the curtains, pull down the little levers next to your candidates’ names, and then go back to the big lever, opening the curtains with an amazingly satisfying thunk.

That, at any rate, was how it was done in New York. Now it’s a much more light-filled process — you show your voter card on your phone, you’re printed out and handed a long ballot, you go to a little standing desk and fill in the circles, as if it were an SAT form, and then you feed it into a scanner.

I miss the thunk.

But the point is that the election was straightforward. You knew what you had to do, and so did the invariably friendly poll workers and watchers. You knew that you’d hear the results by that evening, and that you’d trust them.

Of course it’s different in Israel. It’s a parliamentary system, so it’s not as simple as the person with the most votes winning. Instead it’s a vortex of negotiating and deal making and uncertainty. It’s built into the system.

We were told, before the election, that it was highly unlikely that there would be any clear path toward an easily formed government, and it was correct. There isn’t. There is an enormous amount of tenterhook-sitting going on right now. The stakes are high. We can feel the tension rising, even over here.

Many Israeli-Americans went back to Israel to vote, even though the fares were high and the inconvenience substantial. But people care hugely about the outcome of this election.

And then of course there’s our own election, which will culminate on Tuesday, although an enormous number of people already have voted by now, and many more — maybe a majority of voters — will have voted by then. Some of that is convenience, and there’s nothing wrong with that — it’s pure luxury to be able to vote on a Sunday morning — but another part of it is many voters’ desire cast our vote as soon as possible. (Many of us wish we could do it not only early but also often. That would be a very bad idea.)

Yes, we’re always told that every election is vitally important, maybe the most important ever — but really this election is vitally important. Maybe the most important ever. And so was Israel’s already counted but still perilously undecided one.

These two elections show us how deep our desire for democracy is, and how much we want to be part of it. How much we want to have our voices count.

If you haven’t voted yet, be sure to head to the polls and make your voice heard.

—JP